Toph Saw it Coming
by Jasmine Dragon
Summary: All her life she had been hidden, overshadowed. But now the person who hid her is gone, as she never let Toph save her life. Toph saw it coming. She didn't.


**Disclaimer: Don't own Avatar: The Last Air bender. What's the point of these disclaimers anyway? Its not like we're making any money off these fics or anything… **

**Anyways, here's the story!**

"I hate you! You can't do anything right!" Katara screamed at her brother. He was just so annoying at times.

"It was an accident! Sue me! Yeesh!" Sokka shouted back. Stupid hormonal teenage girls, always getting so emotional; what was their problem anyways?

Toph sighed. There they went, fighting again. Couldn't they leave her and Aang to a moment's peace? She could hear Katara stalking off and Sokka slumping down. She winced as she remembered that painful night. She remembered the whole reason she had joined Aang in the first place. Sure she did love to fight, but what she really wanted to do was get away from her family.

They had always treated her differently because she was blind. Kiela had always gotten the special treatment.

They were twins; equals, but Keila always got to go out in the market and spend time outside, while she was restrained to only her earth bending school, where she work as hard as she could, trying to perfect her skill in stealth so that Master Yu wouldn't find out and declare her ready to leave.

It was in one of her lessons when she heard some boys talking about the earth rumble. A competition for earth benders? She wondered how she would fare, and entered. It was from then on that the legend of the blind bandit was created. Finally, she had something to show for her hard work, something to shove in her sister's face, telling her that she got this position even though she was blind; "handicap" as she put it.

She had something to prove that she could handle anything a seeing person could. She could now prove to her family that she wasn't helpless. She had the opportunity: but she couldn't take it. If she told her parents that she participated in the earth rumble, the bars that imprisoned her would tighten; she would be giving her parents a reason to keep her at home all the time, under their watchful hawk-like eyes, and the only contact she would have with the outside world would be Kiela's boastful voice, bragging about what she had done that day. But that wouldn't be different from what she did everyday. Everyday was just Kiela, Kiela, Kiela.

Kiela telling her about all the friends she had and what she did with them, Kiela at the age of five, telling her parents about what she had done at school, the place where you were required to "read", telling them about all the new words she learnt to spell, bragging about all of the sports she excelled at. When Toph asked to learn one of these sports, "Rockball" which required you to Earthbend a rock into a goalpost, Kiela airily replied that it required precision. The fact that you needed sight for precision remained an unsaid insult.

So Toph set another goal for herself to master Rockball as she had Earthbending, and she succeeded, and in the process, the "frail, little blind girl" quickened her reflexes, sharpened her senses, taught herself to listen to the earth, and slowly, she mastered every challenge her sister brought home, albeit in hiding so her family couldn't find out, but she did it, and the fact that she did was enough to keep her trampled on ego alive.

So one day, Their mother had instructed Kiela to walk home with her sister, reminding her of Toph's sprained wrist. Her mother had been worried sick, and only due to Toph's insistence was she allowed to go Earthbending that day. Kiela, being her usual social self, had engaged in conversation, seeing her friends nearby, leaving Toph to stare into space while they discussed clothes, make-up and jewelry.

The descriptions and looks her sister went on and on about really didn't make sense to her, so she fell back to doing what she did whenever she was bored. Meditating on the earth, listening to the ground and trying to catch a glimpse of all the conversation around her while she honed her talent.

It was then that she heard the faint rumble of the earth. Something was not quite right. She bent down and pressed her fingers against he earth. Yes, she detected that something was definitely out of place. Her fingertips felt something like an avalanche approaching.

"What's your weird sister doing?" she heard one of Kiela's friends say.

A curt tap on her shoulder made her snap out of a trance the approaching avalanche gave her. Her ears sharpened as she listened to what her sister had to say.

"What are you doing? Trying to _see _again?" she could sense the smirk on Kiela's face. Kiela had grown up with her, and she knew that Toph needed no special treatment even though she was blind. She knew it irritated her to be treated different, and taunted on her blindness, which is exactly why she did it.

"Get out of the way." Toph spoke up suddenly. The avalanche was approaching way to fast for it to be an avalanche, or even a landslide.

She heard a distant yell of "stampede!" which she was sure the other girls missed.

Flinging herself aside, she screamed at the top of her lungs "Move!"

Kiela's friends jumped aside, taken aback, believing Toph was crazy. All of the girls had gotten out of the way, and just as she was about to justify her outburst, she sensed that Kiela was still in dangers path.

Kiela was used to Toph's outbursts, and didn't take them seriously. Her squeals of delight usually meant that she had "seen" an ant or and aphid. That was cute and all, but nothing to be taken seriously. She also liked a position of superiority over others, making herself seem braver by standing her ground, whilst the others ran away. This stubbornness was about the only thing the twins shared.

Toph rolled her hazed eyes, and was about to scream at her sister, telling her about the oncoming stampede, when she witnessed it herself.

It was the last thing she ever saw. All of Kiela's friends cringed, winced, shut their eyes and looked away, but Toph couldn't. Her feet, here "eyes" were glued to the floor, and she had to stay there, at the age of eleven, and was forced to "watch" as her sister got run over, trampled, and she could feel her being drained of life, and Toph was filled with sorrow, feeling that it was all her fault.

Later on when questioned about her sisters death, all she would say was "I saw it coming, she didn't".

So that was how Kiela Bei Fong died, leaving the Bei Fong family with only one daughter, to treasure and protect. Now that little blind girl was all they had. And she ran away.

Toph shook her head, shaking out the remorse that filled her for the first time when she thought about leaving home. She hadn't thought about what it would do to her parents. Family was such a –

"Hey Katara, can you make dinner?" Sokka said as he saw his sister emerge from the forest.

"I'm still not talking to you," She said grumpily, sitting down next to the fire, right in front of Sokka, glaring at him through the flames.

Sighing in a resigned manner, Sokka got up, sensing his cue for his "Stomping off into the forest" walk.

That used to be just like her and Kiela, Toph thought reminiscing. That was just how they behaved when their stubbornness got the better of them.

She shook her head. Time to make things right between Sugar Queen and Meathead.

"Hey Meathead, wait up!" Toph shouted, running into the forest.

**Reviews are always appreciated!**

**Jasmine **


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